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Disentangling the complex nerve fibre network of the brain is becoming easily accessible with scattered light imaging (SLI): researchers in Delft, Jülich (Germany) and Stanford (USA) successfully combined light and X-ray scattering with MRI to discern nerve fibre trajectories, also in regions with highly entangled fibres. SLI revealed the trajectories at highest detail, while being significantly faster and cheaper than X-ray and MRI techniques. Such detailed mapping is essential for a better understanding of how nerve fibres are wired inside the brain.

The Domain Board Science of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded 28 applications in the Open Competition Domain Science - XS. One of the honoured applications is from Aswin Muralidharan for project ‘Using bacterial defense machinery for selective killing of cancer cells’. Aswin Muralidharan is a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Stan Brouns (Department of Bionanoscience). Muralidharan’s current research interest lies in interactions of bacteria and bacteriophages.

In April 2023, Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robbert Dijkgraaf officially opened the renovated Electron Microscopy Centre (EMC) in Utrecht. In what used to be a somewhat disjointed field of science, the EMC provides a hub where researchers from all the relevant disciplines have access to the expensive equipment for electron microscopy. This significant development is the result of the intensive efforts of the Perspectief consortium Microscopy Valley, with Delft University of Technology as one of the parties.

TU Delft’s Executive Board has appointed Wim Koppers as Director of the TU Delft Reactor Institute with effect from 1 September 2023.

On Thursday 11 May, Delft University Fund organised the 2023 Marina van Damme Grant Award Ceremony. Three female Delft alumni stood the chance to win the coveted grant of €9,000. After three impressive pitches and a short jury meeting, Prof. Marina van Geenhuizen, chair of the jury, announced that it was a "roaring" 20th edition with a surprising result: both Mei Ling Tan and Oleksandra Ivashchenko were declared winners of the Marina van Damme Grant 2023.

A Dutch consortium, led by national energy research institute DIFFER, will receive 4.7 million euros from NWO to build a facility that makes controlled layers of material. Through this facility, Delft researchers and partnering institutes can explore materials for new catalysts and batteries.

A major challenge in the energy transition is the efficient and flexible storage and transportation of renewable energy. Batteries will play an important role in this. However, much research and innovation are still required. In order to encourage this, on Thursday 11 May 2023 TU Delft will be launching e4BatteryDelft: a brand-new platform that will focus on electrochemical storage of renewable energy – with respect for the world around us, in a way that is affordable and also totally European.

Marileen Dogterom, Professor of Bionanosciences at the Faculty of Applied Sciences (AS) and president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), was made a Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion in the municipality of Woerden. The so-called ribbon is a reward for someone who has done groundbreaking (scientific) work for Dutch society.

Two protein complexes carry the major responsibility for the spatial organisation of chromosomes in our cell nuclei. DNA tension plays a surprising role in this. Together with Austrian colleagues, nanoscientist Cees Dekker and his PhD candidate Roman Barth of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at TU Delft now publish how they have visualised this in detail in Nature on April 19.

DNA replication is the process whereby cells make an exact copy of their DNA before cell division. A key part of the intricate DNA replication machinery is a molecular motor called CMG, which has the vital task of separating the two strands of the DNA double helix so that they can be copied. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from TU Delft has now developed a new methodology to assemble and image the motion of CMG with unprecedented resolution.